Hi all. I recently bought an M16A1 and converted it to a 11.5 inch gun with a sliding stock and an AAC M42000 suppressor. Of course I did a couple of mag dumps when I first took it to the range. Now I only do burst fire only at the most. Too much heat; too much smoke (I know I’m lame). I now want to get an upper for it to do sustained fire from a bipod at targets 100 yards or farther using a beta-mag. Basically I want a SAW 249 like gun to blow up old washing machines. A Shrike is not an option. I want something with a heavy barrel (18-20 inches) and a FF rail. I thought about a piston setup to help with the heat issue but no reputable company makes any barrels longer than 16 inches. Should I just get a Colt HBAR 20 incher with a DD Omega rail and be done with it? Below is how it’s currently set up. Thanks in advance.
I saw that on Colt’s website. There appears to be a paucity of uppers for sale (at least genuine Colts). It looks like it fires from an open bolt and uses a different hydraulic buffer. I wonder if that is designed for rifle receiver extensions only. Man that barrel looks like it’s on steroids.
Open bolt uppers require a different FCG, so you need to decide if you want to dedicate your M16 to the LMG upper, or if you’re willing to swap out the FCG every time you want to use a closed-bolt upper.
There are only 2 in civilian hands (so I have been told) and I own one of them. There are many of the older LMG A2 style uppers but not the LSW was made for the Marine trials when they were initially looking to replace the M249.
It fires from an open bolt and is not select fire, aka full auto only.
I use an AAC 416SD suppressor on mine.
The gas tube is much heavier wall and the barrels are hammer forged and very heavy. They require special front sight block due to the barrel diameter.
It is one of the most controllable machine guns I have ever fired.
That was awesome. Whatever the life expectency of that Colt LSW barrel is for that type of fire, I probably need to divide that by 3 for a regular heavy barrel on a closed bolt gun. Thanks for the info and videos Mongo! LMT MRP with 20 inch barrel? At least I can change out the barrel and BCG every 10K rounds or so.
[b]The Stoner 63A you saw in the thermal video had over 100K rnds through the barrel before they started tumbling. It was very accurate up until the bullets started tumbling. There is now no rifling left in the barrel, lucky it is a QCB and I put a new one in it ($6K per barrel hurts though).
Probably is pretty devastating at 30 yrds w/o the rifling.[/b]
I put a standard dd barrel i got a hell of a deal on, on a bcm upper. Use beta mag in it. My advise, buy barrels on sale. You don’t feel so bad when you cook it.
A local belt fed machine gun match changed their rules to allow for machine guns with detachable box fed magazines that fire rifle calibers. I set my “M-16” similar to your specs just for the match. I use a Larue rail, forward grip and a 16" Rock River Heavy Barrel with mid-length gas system. I also use a Versa Pod and my fore grip can be adjusted at a 45 degree angle. I use the fore grip to pull down on while firing. The system works surprisingly well.
I know many will not like my choice of a Rock River barrel, but when all you are doing is F/A fire who cares. The barrel has held up fine. I am considering a piston conversion for this gun as the continuous F/A fire is really hard on gas tubes.
I admit these “matches” are a big waste of ammunition and is in no way training, but to some of us it is fun. I train on other days.
It varies. The matches I have shot have had targets from 50 -200 yards. The range goes to 500. There is a specified number of required hits per paper target. Sometimes they have you engage a bank of targets with a single trigger pull and there is a required number of hits per target. Detachable mags are allowed to let up on the trigger for mag changes only. Belt feds must shoot one continuous burst per target bank. Other times the bursts are whatever number of rounds you decide on and you can fire as many bursts as you feel you need, but there is a required number of hits per target. They use both paper and steel targets.
Basically it is a bunch of friends who like to waste ammo on a Saturday then go to lunch. You can find info on our belt fed and subgun matches at http://www.azfullauto.com/. If you go to the match result tab some of the dates have photos posted along with the scores.
Just got out of another 3 weeks int he hospital. Hopefully my last time. Most likely looking at a minimum of 3 months before I can start looking at finding a job again.
Glad to hear it. It live in east Texas, I’ll be visiting some friends in November. If your up and at em, maybe well get together, and illl bring some fun toys too.
Sorry to resurrect, but I have new info to a question asked and did not want to start a new thread.
For the past two months and who knows how many more to come, we have been using the National Guard MG range for our “BeltFed” matches. We use the pop up targets from 100-600 meters and they program them for the number of hits required to knock them down. Today the targets required 3 hits each and we used tannerite on a stick at 75 to 100 meters as a stop target.
At the end of the match they set the targets up out to 1000 meters and let us use precision rifles to practice.
It was a good day. The past two matches have been much more fun.
